The player takes control of many of the major Fast & Furious series characters, except for the noticeably absent Dominic Toretto.

The story begins with a cut scene featuring Monica Fuentes finding Riley Hicks digging around through files in her office. Riley introduces herself and states she is going to meet Luke Hobbs in 24 hours, and needs to know everything Hobbs has been up to. The missions are then events told by Monica to explain what Hobbs had been dealing with. Through this, various events from the movies, like the safe dragging scene from Fast Five, or the hijacking scene from Fast & Furious are presented.

The gameplay of Fast & Furious: Showdown focuses on cooperative driving and car combat. The game is centered around different missions, all centered around driving around in semi-destructible loops. These missions can range from a normal race to surviving a certain number of laps. In some missions, the character may need to hijack another vehicle by jumping from the top of their vehicle to the other. All the cars have health bars, and some feature nitro abilities.

The game can be played with an AI partner or in local cooperative play. There is no online gameplay. The gameplay varies from having two separate cars, to one person manning the turret while the other drives, to one person jumping out of the car and hijacking the other.

With the Summer Vibes edition included only the Hour musics.